November Devlog: Week #1

Another busy week at Project Gamechanger and bear with us since this is probably our biggest Development Log to date.

With our servers now running 24/7 rather than only during scheduled testing times, we have been able to run through more tests to the game and made extensive changes to ensure Depths of Erendorn runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Environment

We have been experimenting with potential lighting setups and creating blackouts for environment assets. More details are being added to the game environment as we sculpt rocks and scatter multiple sets of them in the game.

Concept Blockout Image

Testing concept of having glowing water

Scattering rocks

Sculptured rock sample

Different light colors can affect the mood of the atmosphere

Animation

We have been working on the last animation assets for the Zentragal with the delivery of basic sets for spell casting and equip/unequip weapons.

This week also marks the start of the animation process for Enemies. Giant Rats, Swamp Rats and Human Bandits are the first to go through the treatment of rigging and skinning. This is one of the longest challenges ahead since Depths of Erendorn parades an astounding 400 different enemies. As always, you will get the first scoop here in our DevLog.

Giant Rat Rig

Giant Rat Rig

Giant Rat Rig

Server

We have done a few improvements to our internal test servers:

• Not all Triggers were correctly being removed when a status effect was removed from an entity.  Status effects shouldn’t proc after they are removed now.
• We found a bug with the room transition where if the reroll vote ended before everyone has chosen their preferred tile to transition to, it would no longer let the players choose a position. This has now been corrected.
• Fixed a bug in an ability building block where the chance to apply a state, stat or status was always applying instead of obeying the chance %.
• Fixed several bugs in abilities relating to storing targets between ability building blocks.
• Fixed a bug that was causing some stat additions to be multiplied by 100.
• Fixed some abilities that were breaking when no friendlies were alive.
• Fixed a bug where an ability wasn’t showing a debuff on the affected enemy.
• 100 Movement Gain between rooms removed.
• Applied some adjustments to some abilities that seemed unbalanced during our testing sessions.
• Internal test servers now run 24/7 instead of only during scheduled test times.

Client

We have implemented a series of changes and fixes to the game client over the past week.

We have added our new wall pieces, improving the overall look of the dungeons.

Small tile selection overhaul (pathing):

Small tile selection overhaul

• When selecting a tile for pathing, the tiles up until the character’s max movement are coloured green. The rest of the tiles (if the tile is not within the character’s reach) are coloured red.
• Players can still choose to path partially if the path is longer than the character’s max movement.

We have also added an intuition element which will aid players during voting: players can now consciously choose to reroll a room based on the enemies that are discovered within.

Reroll Screen

Room transition, functionality:

• When the last player ends their turn (after all enemies are dead), a new room will build in _everyone’s_ client. Before, everyone had to individually end their turn to trigger this functionality.
• When choosing a new spawn position, the character of the player who issued this position change will be displaced. Before, the first character of the team would be displaced continuously.
• Displaced character (see point above) of one player is visible in every other player’s client, instead of only being visible in the client of the player that issued the displacement.
• Room transition, spawning area appearance:
  • The spawning area is now affected by the grid shader, making tile selection visually easier.
  • Tiles reset to their original colour after all players have chosen their new position, instead of doing it when a player clicks anywhere within the screen.
• Fixed outline shader for Twilight Elf Assassin.
• Fixed bug where the player could break the game scene by spamming the ‘Enter Game’ button in the character selection screen.
• Fixed bug where the alt key could get stuck during rotation (in windowed mode).
• Made a few adjustments to our music settings in the game client.
  •   The cave playlist is shuffled each time the player enters the game.
  •   Added cave piece 4 and 5 to the playlist.
  •   Fixed bug where the cave playlist would play in the character selection screen.
• Made a small notification system, which notifies players about current game states. Currently, it’s only being used in the character selection screen when the player hasn’t chosen enough (class) skills, but this system can be used virtually everywhere.

Character selection screen

As usual, we would love to hear what you have to say so feel free to drop us a message via email, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.